


Little Dragon

by anassa_anemou



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Dragons, M/M, Mythical Beings & Creatures, Rare Pairings
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-07-06
Updated: 2013-07-06
Packaged: 2017-12-17 20:07:09
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,888
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/871468
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/anassa_anemou/pseuds/anassa_anemou
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Neville never expected to enjoy taking care of a baby dragon.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Little Dragon

**Author's Note:**

> Made for the prompt: - Draco has a condition in which he keeps turning into a monster or creature*. Neville has/can grow the rare/difficult plant to cure it. (at hp_rarefest)

Neville watches while Draco huffs at the table, it’s almost like he wanted to snicker, but being in a dragon form he can’t really give many facial expressions. It’s weird to think he will be on babysit watch while he can grow the Hesperis Draconis, parent of the Hesperis matronalis, or the queen’s gillyflower. It’s rare in Europe and she needs constant looking after, especially at night, which makes Draco and him keep a lot of their time in the greenhouse, trying to keep the sleep at bay.

 

Sometimes is quiet and Neville almost forgets Draco is there with him and if it wasn’t night time he wouldn’t see much of a difference to his normal life in the period Hogwarts doesn’t have students and the professors go home as well. Neville never does, his grandmother died and he got alone moving all around Europe studying until McGonagall offered him the job and ultimately a home. 

 

Right now they are watching as the sun starts to rise and the Hesperis is starting to move less, retracting to her vase and slowly falling asleep. It means it is almost time for them to move too and go back to Hagrid’s cabin, loaned to them while the half giant goes to visit Madame Maxime. Neville is grateful, one day inside the castle and Draco caused so much mayhem McGonagall wanted to lock both of them on the dungeons and forget it the whole situation. 

 

Neville gets up and starts to trail out, in between the pots and the moving plants that take their growth during the day. He laughs when he fills the scaly skin bumping against his arm, it’s Draco’s way of telling Neville he wants to be carried, that his wings are sore. If Draco was a true dragon in this age he would have more tonus in his muscles and would have a good number of hours in air before feeling tired, but having been transformed to the approached age in dragon years, means he is much more fragile.

 

They steadily move to the cabin, now Draco is held in a cocoon of Neville’s arms, purring, or the equivalent of dragon’s sound of pleasure. It’s funny to think in school the only way Neville would want Malfoy to approach him would be to strangle him and thrown his body in the lake. While he wanted to scream at McGonagall for making take care of the blond, Neville can appreciate the fact that Draco needs him right now and he will be sure to remind that to Malfoy when he comes back to human form.

 

“Stop nipping my clothes, they are not food or a toy, Malfoy.” Neville pushes the nose, knowing that the sensitive skin will make Draco pull off and sneeze. He is quick to take his arm away, more than once he got burned by the little fire that will scape Draco’s nostrils. 

 

Neville imagines that Draco would huff or simply cast a spell, if he had the chance, but being like this and not knowing when or if he will be back to normal without Hermione’s potion, makes less of a brat. Of course part of it is that he didn’t just turned into a dragon and maintained his human mind; Hermione thinks he has a human mind of the dragon age equivalent, which means Draco has three years old mind if you flip dragon years to human years.  
The cabin is dark and Neville promptly cast a spell bringing the fireplace to life; he puts Draco in the nest he made in front of the fire and goes in his routine to make them food before they both get a good nap time. Having to babysit the Hesperis at night, making sure she doesn’t do naughty things with the other plants means having breakfast and sleeping until after lunch. He wonders how his life revolves around having to stop a plant from frolicking with other species and collecting the pollen that only is produced if said plant masturbates from being aroused by the presence of the other fellow plants. 

 

He places the bottle of meat and fat smoothie near Draco’s mouth, not putting inside or trying to touch him in any way. Neville lost, temporarily, his eyebrows when he tried to put the dragon in his arms as a normal human baby and feed it. Hermione made tests after the third time he almost lost all of his body hair and they realized that Draco still maintained his memories and part of his snark. 

 

His own breakfast is a plate of bacon and eggs, with a piece of almost rock hard bread. Neville could just leave and eat in the castle, but he always hates the panicked eyes Draco’s makes and when he is back the cabin is always half destroyed; he is quite tired of fixing things. The worst part is that while in the beginning of this he would get mad at Draco and what he called his tantrums, now he gets it, it’s an instinctive response: and it isn’t fuck up that Draco has in Neville a mother figure?

 

When he drops to the massive bed, Draco curled by his side, he prays silently this will be over soon.

**o**

Neville wakes up with something pressing him to bed, it’s weird and his sleepy brain isn’t helping to figure out. His eyes open slowly and he just wants to turn around and go back to sleep, but somehow he wants to know and maybe it’s still the memory of the times he would sleep inside alcoves in the castle, running from the Carrows. 

 

There is something prickling his nose and a type of breeze hitting his neck; fighting sleep he pulls up on the bed and someone groans, and he freezes. Who the hell is in bed with him and where is Draco? It’s them he sees the blond hair and he squeezes his eyes shut. If this is Draco, it means the spell Harry cast wore off and they don’t need the Hesperis. Strangely it makes him feel off, but why should him want this to continue? If Draco is ok, he will be able to just go back to his routine, maybe do a trip to France before the school year starts.

 

When he shifts to leave the bed, Draco’s eyes open and he has a confused frown instantly, it’s been more than three months since they started to grow the plant, three months that Draco been in a dragon form; when Neville blinks and tries again to move from the bed some thing shifts and Draco is back to his dragon form, huffing in annoyed at the light shining through the window.  
Neville closes his eyes for a second and finally finds the courage to get up, Draco is hovering in bed, probably trying to get why they are woken before lunch; they learned dragons have great inner clocks. Which reminds him it’s better go on and make a floo call to Hermione, through all this, Draco never came back to his human form. 

 

While he puts on a coat and leans to grab the floo powder, Draco whines in bed, Neville smiles and remembers how this sound is the same Draco made when they reached some sort of truce.

**o**

Taking care of a dragon isn't easy, especially when said dragon keeps huffing and setting things on fire when Neville tries to leave it alone or when other people get too close. Hermione is probably the only one Draco let’s get close, and only because she rubs the dragons saliva to make his scales clean; if Draco was a true dragon, his mother would bathe him weekly with her tongue to avoid bugs, cracks and other ills until his skin closes and he changes his scales normally.

 

Today, Hermione already took care of it and made the tests to make sure Draco's condition isn't getting worse. As soon as she leaves, he becomes agitated and pouty, if Neville can call the dragon expression a pout. Neville feels exasperated, human Draco always wanted attention and normally he got it, after the war the attention was all ill-intended, but somehow it was better than people forgetting the Malfoys. 

 

He will have patience, even if his mind supplies several plants he could slip into Draco’s food that could kill the boy and pass as a mistake; Neville isn’t a murder, he killed way too many people at war, but he can, not even in thought, decide to kill someone that is only in need of comfort. Suddenly he remembers how neither Lucius nor Narcissa had wanted to take care of Draco while he stayed in dragon form, and that makes him think perhaps, they don’t even know how to handle a Draco that has a baby age and needs constant care.

 

Neville himself never had someone to hug him or pat his back, someone to hold him when he cried at night or put him in their lap to let the bad dreams go away, his grandmother was strict woman, one that had to bury any type of emotions to not bend and let her grandson without a parent figure. She never been gentle, but he knew she loved him and that being her last family, he was a constant worry.

 

So he resigned himself to pick the little dragon from the bed and pull him to his chest, bending the head with one hand to make the nostrils change their direction from his arms to the floor, he really didn’t want to get burned again. His other hand slid at one bone at a time, caressing the wings and letting Draco relax in his embrace. It was then that the once blond, started a rumbled sound, coming from his chest and spreading around them, until it reached his mouth and to Neville it was a cross from a moan and whine.

 

The caresses continued until Draco fell asleep, his eyes drooping and his tail coiling around Neville’s neck; it was clear ownership gesture, Hermione warned him for them, with the time passing, Draco would become each time more attached, she feared he would mate Neville, since he was the only person Draco would have constant contact.

 

Feeling warm and content, Neville didn’t know if it would be that bad, or least, it would only be bad when Draco came back to his human form. Neville wasn’t not even a bit in a hurry to see that happen, he knew Draco would make a fit.

**o**

Hermione tells him it is a side effect, away of ensure Draco will remember he is human and not a dragon. And it makes sense, since Harry didn’t meant the spell and only thrown it when Draco started venting about Snape; Neville is still laughing about the irony, after him, Harry always had the hardest time with the Potion’s Master. He knows the war changed a lot of perspectives, he is, after all, taking care of Malfoy, but is still a little weird to see Harry defending their ex-professor so strongly.

 

Three days pass without changes, and Neville harvests the plant, taking her to Hermione, who will begin the potion. Melancholy descends the cabin and Draco refuses to let Neville touch him, the dragon curl in front of the fire and huffs sparks anytime Neville approaches. Who knew Draco, any Draco, would feel betrayed as Neville had insured the means for his transformation, and it is betrayal Neville reads in the shinny eyes.

 

When Hermione brings the potion at night, Neville sees her make Draco drink it from the door, if he gets close he knows Draco will be agitated again. The transformation happens quick, scale becoming skin, lizard eyes going grey and human, hair growing, legs forming, wings shrieking to arms. When Draco is all human, Neville and him lock eyes, they didn’t bond, or mate, but it feels like it.

 

Draco doesn’t say a word, not to Neville, not to Hermione, he squeezes her hand and moves to the door, Neville sidestep him, leaving the door free and Draco leaves with hard steps sound against the night.

 

“He will come back, Nev, just give him time to process things.” Hermione voice is gentle and Neville nods, he wants her gone, so he can close the cabin and go back to his quarters in the castle.

 

His hands fly with movement, putting everything back in place, when he finishes, and it’s back at the castle, his last thought are a trip to France should really do the magic: one or two weeks researching before schools starts will make him forget about this; he snorts just after entering the bed sheets.

**o**

Neville likes traveling around France, each knew botanical garden is more beautiful than the other, and his mind, while still replying his and Draco’s time together, can find calm enough to see the nature embracing him. It’s in the forty-fifth garden that he finds a blue dragon resting against a topiary he is sure to be of a Wizard. The dragon huffs at him, it seems to smell the air and see if Neville wants to harm him or not; when Neville casts a minor protecting spell and extends his gloved hand to the creature, he is rewarded with a rubbing of the tail against his fingers.

 

In the fifth garden, France has two hundred forty-eight certified gardens, when a green and fat dragon sits in his shoulder that he realizes being with Draco made him dragon-friendly and apparently truthful to wild creatures. A quick portal to Romania to visit Charlie informs him that baby dragons can feel closer to humans if there isn’t a mother or if the mother rejects the babies and therefore, those dragons he found in the wild, recognize him as nurse, so they don’t mind having him around.

 

When Neville explains to Charlie how the dragon spends all that time with him, he has to hear a boisterous laugh and jokes all through the night while the drink at the pub. Charlie is a good friend, albeit a bit sassy, and Neville is happy they still keep in touch because of their work, it isn’t everyday you keep friends with one of your school mate’s brother, especially when you had a fuck-buddies situation with him.

**o**

Paris is the last place he visits, just because finding a portkey will be much easier than in other cities. The Bois de Boulogne is where he will activate the key, and he included because the park is his little corner to love in the capital: just once when his Grandmother took him, it was enough to take all of his breath away. 

 

He isn’t expecting to find people in this area, at least, not people that weren’t prostitutes and their clients, and since the lake is a very open a public area, the pitch black night should disencourage people. Only when he is very close, he realizes the fair hair and the point shin that once terrorized his childhood.

 

“My dad had to ask for favors in the Ministry for me to find you while you were hoping through France, imagine his distaste? Finally Granger clued me in and I was able to track you magic signature, if I was more like my teenagers self i would say you were running. ” Funny, Neville thinks, he just did. He keeps in silence and waits for Draco to speak again, he isn’t sure what the man is doing here. “I wanted to say thank you, I know it was trying to take care of the dragon.”

 

Draco doesn’t say himself, just the dragon and Neville understands: at the time, Malfoy was vulnerable and at Neville’s mercy, something neither of them can really cope. So he sits by Draco side in the grass and looks at the lake, his water moving gently. 

 

“What are you doing here, Malfoy? You could’ve waited for me to come back to Hogwarts.”

 

“Perhaps, but McGonagall is becoming worse than Dumbledore and I didn’t wish her to put her Scottish nose in it.” Neville smiles, Draco still hates it’s another Gryffindor in the power.

 

“You didn’t answer the question.”

 

“I came to say thank you, mother keeps constantly reminding me of how rude it is to have left you without a word. I agreed with her, it was rude.”

 

“Well, you already said your thank you, I am welcomed, so...”

 

“I can go.” Draco frowns and looks at Neville face, his voice trembles when he reaches Nevilles tight and curls his hand around the front. “Strangely, I don’t want to leave and while mother was being annoying, I quite like having you near.” 

 

Neville smiles and puts his own hand above Draco, it’s comforting to touch again. He remembers his portkey, they have one more hour and then he will have to go. Draco doesn’t seem to mind, after a few minutes his head bends and lies against Neville’s shoulder. It’s a pretty night and Neville is smiling. 

 

It’s such a Draco thing to not say anything and just bend other to his wills, he doesn’t say anything, just rests his head on top of the blond hair, he won’t ruin the mood, they can talk later.


End file.
